War Horse UK Tour

I saw the first ever performance of War Horse

When they gave me a free ticket

Due to initial lack of sales

And look what it became then

This is the first time since then I have seen it again

Cannot believe it’s 11 years ago

The show is without any doubt

One of the most complete pieces of performance to come out of the NT in its history

No other show I have seen in 20 years there

Will have this level of universal appeal

Demonstrated by the 7.2 million people who have seen it around the world

Seeing the performance tonight

Brings back memories of the NT at its peak

It was no coincidence

The three biggest successes

In their history

Critically
Financially
And awards wise

Were all
In NH regime

War horse ran for 3000 performances
In the WE alone

And over 700 on Broadway

Amadeus did 181 shows there

Your list is hardly
Comparable

Curious incident ran for over 1600 west end performances
In the intial outing alone

And 800 on broadway

You are wrong. Amadeus did 1181 shows on Broadway, many more than your examples. Equus did 1209 on Broadway, again many more.

I'm considering returning. I do love the play. The music alone is absolutely beautiful. The original song man was terrific. I wish it was all on Spotify!

Took my nieces yesterday, we'd got drenched in all the rain earlier in the day getting across London and had skipped trying to do Christmas lights etc because of that and had just moved into the NT for a few hours. They were really thrown by the fact that you could eat at a theatre and that it had wide open spaces (their theatre exposure so far has been a few westend matilda like trips) and rather enjoyed exploring though did give me some failure when they'd gone to the toilets and hadn't re-appeared and I was torn between running round the building like a mad person or trying to sit tight and not panic (queue that relief when kids reappear and you're cross and happy at the same time [they'd missed the better hid toilets and ended up in that endless downstairs lyttelton queue]). So by the time we went in they were rather tired and excited and at least one bit apprehensive. Kudos for NT for giving out cushions for the kids solving one problem. I was surprised at how young some of the children there were, the little boy behind me couldn't have been more than 6/7, he didn't seem at all bothered but talked a lot but since his mother chatted back as if they were in fact in their front room it was hardly his fault.


I saw it first back in it's first run days and hoping they would share some of my wonder at the puppets, the pull on the heartstrings, the cleverness of the staging, the pull of the music. I welled up from the first introduction of Joey that I can only put down to my knowledge of what was going to happen which took me quite by surprise. The was a wonderful moment when small Joey turns into adult Joey and one niece turned to the other and her face was just a picture of wow! I had forgotten quite how hard it was to watch, bits had changed since I first saw it and it turned out I mainly remembered the horse bits than the people and found it grimmer than i'd remembered. By the interval youngest niece was rather superglued hanging onto her sister and I feared she was upset and wouldn't want to come back in but she was thankfully ok. Second half they both spent a fair amount of time with their hands over their ears in the loud bits but with their heads darting to follow what was happening. I found their critiques quite interesting, the saddest bit one said was when the three horse operators left Topthorn's body she said as it was like his soul leaving, the other explained with some pride how the strip of torn drawing had become the white slash across the sky and the pictures on this helped her understand what was happening. Seemed to go down well and neither seemed upset though we did have some death conversations on the way home.


We seemed to identify the NT essentials; it sometimes quicker to go to the sneakily hidden toilets round the building, the shop sells most random things (unicorn snot anyone?), it is a strange building to look at (their thoughts unprompted from me) that you should sit still and be quiet so as not ruin it for those behind you, free water, wifi and handy as a place to hang out.

Remains to be seen if the production itself sticks in their memories but all in all it went quite well and since i'd been anticipating all that could go wrong for months I can now relax.

I saw this at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in May, after being handed a free ticket by a complete stranger who I'd been chatting to during a backstage tour of the theatre, and it was the first piece of theatre that properly moved me to tears. I thought the set design was so basic but it worked really well with the different sketch backdrop projections. The ending was touching, and was shortly followed by a huge theatre-wide standing ovation. I feel like on the whole, this is such an underappreciated show. Nobody really talks about it, but the actors are truly workhorses (ha) who work so hard to achieve that level of emotion in the piece, aided by the beautiful music.

As I was a first time viewer I went in with no experience of the previous NT/NLT version but it still felt so flawless. I definitely think it’s in the top tier of tours at the moment.

If they're going to keep bringing stuff back that I missed and want to see, I'm going to end up having to move to London.... 🙄🙄🙄 But EXCITING!

Very happy to read this today. Adored the original production and will absolutely be booking to see this on tour.

Initial dates here

www.warhorseonstage.com/

That must explain why Michael Harrison is co-producing this tour given a lot of his shows have gone to smaller theatres, though still are of good quality.